[OS X TeX] Old style numerals with small caps

[Richard Seguin]

On May 4, 2012, at 10:06 AM, Josep Maria Font wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I supervise the typesetting of a local math journal, which has been done in Lucida Bright since over more than two decades now. The house style uses small caps for numbered statements headers (Theorem etc., Figure etc.) and in the past the corresponding numbers were typeset with the so-called "old style" numerals (also called "hanging" by typographers), following a well-established tradition in good typography. This was done automatically, as we just have {\normalfont\schape ...} for theorem headers, figure name in captions, etc., in our class file, and did not do any manual font selection for such numerals.
> 
> We have noticed that, perhaps since mid-2011, such old style numerals no longer appear; the TeX usual numerals (called "lining" by typographers) are used instead. 
> 
> Has anyone experienced this behaviour and/or has some advice on how to recover our beloved old-style numerals ?
> 
> I don't know whether this is the result of some change in the Lucida font packages (we have \RequirePackage[expert,vargreek,altbullet]{lucidabr} in our own class), or in the "ntheorem" package we use to control the theorems settings, or in the texlive installation itself. We noticed the change after some re-installation of the whole system, in the middle of 2011. Sorry I cannot give more details, as the typesetter is on Windows while I am on a Mac, but anyway I am getting the same results. 
> 
> I know that the command \oldstyle is deactivated in the lucidabr package (why?), but anyway we had been obtaining the old style numerals automatically with just using small caps in the past.
> 
> I include a file with a minimal example (please disregard the "caption" re-definition). Note that I am cross-posting this to the two lists since it's not clear to me whether it is a Lucida issue or not.
> 
> Thanks for any idea.
> 
> 
> JMaF

I can't help much here with your problem, but I will say that those old style numerals are nice. Initially I turned them completely off in the MinionPro package with the lf option, but have since grown to like them, so I'm now using the mathlf option which enables the old style numerals everywhere except in math mode. (I recently also started using drop caps (lettrine package) at the beginning of chapters.)

Richard Séguin